Thursday, 18 July 2013

Sympathy for the cop who inspired 'Slutwalk'

In
2011, a Toronto policeman participating in a campus safety forum was accused of
uttering words to the effect that “women should avoid dressing like sluts in
order not to be victimized”.Participants at this forum seized on his words as a form of ‘victim
blaming’ and launched a movement notable for its vociferous defence of women’s
rights to dress any way they choose, and ended up rather missing the point of
the safety forum.

I
did not attend the aforementioned safety forum; however I have participated in
training sessions related to reducing the risk of becoming a victim.My understanding of this sort of safety
forum is to understand that there are threats – in this case to university
students, specifically women, as the statistics bear out.The likeliest victims of sexual assault
are women aged 15-24, by a large margin – they are 18 times more likely to be
assaulted.It is further estimated
that only about 10% of sexual assaults are reported to police, making clear
statistics difficult to confirm, but this clearly identifies university-aged
women as being in a group that is at higher risk than other members of society.Lots of detail for anyone so inclined
can be found here:http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85f0033m/85f0033m2008019-eng.pdf

As
a result, events like the safety forum and other educational efforts are
important to inform women of the risks that the world holds.Identifying and educating on risk is
not victim blaming.Informing
women when an activity places them at higher risk of being attacked allows
those women to make informed choices to reduce the likelihood of becoming
victims.Note that this in no way
absolves the attacker of responsibility.

Now,
perhaps the police officer should have phrased his words more carefully.“Slut” is an emotionally-charged
word.Perhaps he was going for
shock effect, in which case he succeeded beyond his expectations.It certainly seems to me that he wanted
to get women to consider how their actions may place themselves in greater
risk, and to consider how they may be perceived by potential attackers.

The
corollary to this is that the way a woman dresses is only one factor in a
terribly complicated risk matrix, and likely a relatively minor one.When I was preparing to work in
Afghanistan, we were taught that in socially conservative countries, we would
be judged on how we dressed, and that insufficient respect for local customs
could have fatal consequences.Here
in Canada, clothing choices are far more liberal, and much less likely to be a
factor in whether one is attacked than other choices, like binge drinking,
walking alone at night in unsafe areas, the risk of one’s drink being ‘spiked’
with a sedative or other ‘date-rape’ drug, accepting a ride from a stranger, or
any of a myriad of other risk activities.The statistics indicate that sexual assault is more likely to be
committed by someone known to the victim, so the ‘don’t trust strangers’ part
of the advice won’t have bearing as the betrayal of trust is more likely to be
by someone you don’t know.

Now,
it is possible to follow all the advice from the safety forum and still be a
victim of crime, just as it is possible to refrain from smoking and still contract
lung cancer.The purpose is to
promote consideration of one’s actions and potential consequences.

Please,
attend safety fora.Engage in
discussion.Recognize that someone
can offer advice on how to avoid being a victim without suggesting that a
victim somehow ‘causes’ the crime.